English translation copyright © 2014 by Yuval Noah Harari Cloth edition published 2014 Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Harvill Secker First published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 by Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir Signal Books is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company All rights reserved The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Harari, Yuval N., author Sapiens : a brief history of humankind / Yuval Noah Harari Includes bibliographical references ISBN 978-0-7710-3850-1 (bound).–ISBN 978-0-7710-38525 (html) Civilization–History Human beings–History I Title CB25.H37 2014 909 C2014-904589-1 C2014-904590-5 Jacket design © Suzanne Dean Picture research by Caroline Wood Maps by Neil Gower McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company www.randomhouse.ca v3.1 In loving memory of my father, Shlomo Harari Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Timeline of History Part One The Cognitive Revolution 1 An Animal of No Significance 2 The Tree of Knowledge 3 A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve 4 The Flood Part Two The Agricultural Revolution 5 History’s Biggest Fraud 6 Building Pyramids 7 Memory Overload 8 There is No Justice in History Part Three The Unification of Humankind 9 The Arrow of History 10 The Scent of Money 11 Imperial Visions 12 The Law of Religion 13 The Secret of Success Part Four The Scientific Revolution 14 The Discovery of Ignorance 15 The Marriage of Science and Empire 16 The Capitalist Creed 17 The Wheels of Industry 18 A Permanent Revolution 19 And They Lived Happily Ever After 20 The End of Homo Sapiens Afterword: The Animal that Became a God Notes Acknowledgements Image credits Timeline of History Years Before the Present 13.5 billion 4.5 billion Matter and energy appear Beginning of physics Atoms and molecules appear Beginning of chemistry Formation of planet Earth 3.8 Emergence of organisms Last common grandmother of 2.5 Evolution of the genus Homo in billion Beginning of biology million humans and chimpanzees million Africa First stone tools million 500,000 Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia Evolution of different human species Neanderthals evolve in Europe and the Middle East 300,000 Daily usage of fire 200,000 Homo sapiens evolves in East Africa The Cognitive Revolution is Falling Behind Europe in Farm Animal Welfare (New York: Archimedean Press, 2002) Harry Harlow and Robert Zimmermann, ‘Affectional Responses in the Infant Monkey’, Science 130:3373 (1959), 421–32; Harry Harlow, ‘The Nature of Love’, American Psychologist 13 (1958), 673–85; Laurens D Young et al., ‘Early stress and later response to separation in rhesus monkeys’, American Journal of Psychiatry 130:4 (1973), 400–5; K D Broad, J P Curley and E B Keverne, ‘Mother-infant bonding and the evolution of mammalian social relationships’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361:1476 (2006), 2,199–214; Florent Pittet et al., ‘Effects of maternal experience on fearfulness and maternal behaviour in a precocial bird’, Animal Behaviour (March 2013), In Press – available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S00 ‘National Institute of Food and Agriculture’, United States Department of Agriculture, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.csrees.usda.gov/qlinks/extension.html 18 A Permanent Revolution Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics and Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002); Sarah Catherine Walpole et al., ‘The Weight of Nations: An Estimation of Adult Human Biomass’, BMC Public Health 12:439 (2012), http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471– 2458/12/439 William T Jackman, The Development of Transportation in Modern England (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1966), 324–7; H J Dyos and D H Aldcroft, British Transport-An Economic Survey From the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969), 124– 31; Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) For a detailed discussion of the unprecedented peacefulness of the last few decades, see in particular Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); Joshua S Goldstein, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide (New York: Dutton, 2011); Gat, War in Human Civilization ‘World Report on Violence and Health: Summary, Geneva 2002’, World Health Organization, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.who.int/whr/2001/en/whr01_annex_en.p For mortality rates in previous eras see: Lawrence H Keeley, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) ‘World Health Report, 2004’, World Health Organization, 124, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.who.int/whr/2004/en/reporto4_en.pdf Raymond C Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origin of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 21 See also Gat, War in Human Civilization, 129–31; Keeley, War before Civilization 7 Manuel Eisner, ‘Modernization, Self-Control and Lethal Violence’, British Journal of Criminology 41:4 (2001), 618–638; Manuel Eisner, ‘Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime’, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research 30 (2003), 83–142; ‘World Report on Violence and Health: Summary, Geneva 2002’, World Health Organization, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.who.int/whr/2001/en/whr01_annex_en.p ‘World Health Report, 2004’, World Health Organization, 124, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.who.int/whr/2004/en/reporto4_en.pdf Walker and Bailey, ‘Body Counts in Lowland South American Violence’, 30 19 And They Lived Happily Ever After For both the psychology and biochemistry of happiness, the following are good starting points: Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006); R Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); M Csikszentmihalyi, ‘If We Are So Rich, Why Aren’t We Happy?’, American Psychologist 54:10 (1999): 821–7; F A Huppert, N Baylis and B Keverne (eds.), The Science of Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Happiness, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2001); Ed Diener (ed.), Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener (New York: Springer, 2009); Michael Eid and Randy J Larsen (eds.), The Science of Subjective Well-Being (New York: Guilford Press, 2008); Richard A Easterlin (ed.), Happiness in Economics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002); Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005) 2 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Inglehart et al., ‘Development, Freedom and Rising Happiness’, 278–81 D M McMahon, The Pursuit of Happiness: A History from the Greeks to the Present (London: Allen Lane, 2006) 20 The End of Homo Sapiens Keith T Paige et al., ‘De Novo Cartilage Generation Using Calcium Alginate-Chondrocyte Constructs’, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 97:1 (1996), 168–78 2 David Biello, ‘Bacteria Transformed into Biofuels Refineries’, Scientific American, 27 January 2010, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm? id=bacteria-transformed-into-biofuel-refineries Gary Walsh, ‘Therapeutic Insulins and Their Large-Scale Manufacture’, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 67:2 (2005), 151–9 4 James G Wallis et al., ‘Expression of a Synthetic Antifreeze Protein in Potato Reduces Electrolyte Release at Freezing Temperatures’, Plant Molecular Biology 35:3 (1997), 323–30 Robert J Wall et al., ‘Genetically Enhanced Cows Resist Intramammary Staphylococcus Aureus Infection’, Nature Biotechnology 23:4 (2005), 445– 51 Liangxue Lai et al., ‘Generation of Cloned Transgenic Pigs Rich in Omega-3 Fatty Acids’, Nature Biotechnology 24:4 (2006), 435–6 Ya-Ping Tang et al., ‘Genetic Enhancement of Learning and Memory in Mice’, Nature 401 (1999), 63–9 8 Zoe R Donaldson and Larry J Young, ‘Oxytocin, Vasopressin and the Neurogenetics of Sociality’, Science 322:5903 (2008), 900–904; Zoe R Donaldson, ‘Production of Germline Transgenic Prairie Voles (Microtus Ochrogaster) Using Lentiviral Vectors’, Biology of Reproduction 81:6 (2009), 1,189–95 Terri Pous, ‘Siberian Discovery Could Bring Scientists Closer to Cloning Woolly Mammoth’, Time, 17 September 2012, accessed 19 February 2013; Pasqualino Loi et al, ‘Biological time machines: a realistic approach for cloning an extinct mammal’, Endangered Species Research 14 (2011), 227–33; Leon Huynen, Craig D Millar and David M Lambert, ‘Resurrecting ancient animal genomes: The extinct moa and more’, Bioessays 34 (2012), 661–9 10 Nicholas Wade, ‘Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome’, New York Times, 12 February 2009, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/science/13nea _r=2&ref=science; Zack Zorich, ‘Should We Clone Neanderthals?’, Archaeology 63:2 (2009), accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.archaeology.org/1003/etc/neanderthals.h 11 Robert H Waterston et al., ‘Initial Sequencing and Comparative Analysis of the Mouse Genome’, Nature 420:6915 (2002), 520 12 ‘Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS)’, Microsystems Technology Office, DARPA, accessed 22 March 2012, http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/MTO/Programs/Hyb MEMSpercent29.aspx See also: Sally Adee, ‘Nuclear-Powered Transponder for Cyborg Insect’, IEEE Spectrum, December 2009, accessed 10 December 2010, http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/ nuclearpowered-transponder-for-cyborg-insect? utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_cam +IeeeSpectrum+percent28IEEE+ Spectrumpercent29&utm_content=Google+Reader Jessica Marshall, ‘The Fly Who Bugged Me’, New Scientist 197:2646 (2008), 40–3; Emily Singer, ‘Send in the Rescue Rats’, New Scientist 183:2466 (2004), 21–2; Susan Brown, ‘Stealth Sharks to Patrol the High Seas’, New Scientist 189:2541 (2006), 30–1 13 Bill Christensen, ‘Military Plans Cyborg Sharks’, Live Science, March 2006, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.livescience.com/technology/060307_shark 14 ‘Cochlear Implants’, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, accessed 22 March 2012, http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/coch 15 Retina Implant, http://www.retinaimplant.de/en/doctors/technology/default.aspx 16 David Brown, ‘For 1st Woman With Bionic Arm, a New Life is Within Reach’, Washington Post, 14 September 2006, accessed 10 December 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/o9/13/AR2006091302271 nav=E8 17 Miguel Nicolelis, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains and Machines – and How it Will Change Our Lives (New York: Times Books, 2011) 18 Chris Berdik, ‘Turning Thought into Words’, BU Today, 15 October 2008, accessed 22 March 2012, http://www.bu.edu/today/2008/turningthoughts-into-words/ 19 Jonathan Fildes, ‘Artificial Brain “10 years away” ’, BBC News, 22 July 2009, accessed 19 September 2012, http://news.bbc.c0.uk/2/hi/8164060.stm 20 Radoje Drmanac et al., ‘Human Genome Sequencing Using Unchained Base Reads on SelfAssembling DNA Nanoarrays’, Science 327:5961 (2010), 78–81; ‘Complete Genomics’ website: http://www.completegenomics.com/; Rob Waters, ‘Complete Genomics Gets Gene Sequencing under $5000 (Update 1)’, Bloomberg, November 2009, accessed 10 December 2010; http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news? pid=newsarchive&sid=aWutnyE4S0Ww; Fergus Walsh, ‘Era of Personalized Medicine Awaits’, BBC News, last updated April 2009, accessed 22 March 2012, http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/health/7954968.stm; Leena Rao, ‘PayPal Co-Founder and Founders Fund Partner Joins DNA Sequencing Firm Halcyon Molecular’, TechCrunch, 24 September 2009, accessed 10 December 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/paypal-cofounder-and-founders-fund-partner-joins-dnasequencing-firm-halcyon-molecular/ Acknowledgements For their advice and assistance, thanks to: Sarai Aharoni, Dorit Aharonov, Amos Avisar, Tzafrir Barzilai, Noah Beninga, Suzanne Dean, Caspian Dennis, Tirza Eisenberg, Amir Fink, Sara Holloway, Benjamin Z Kedar, Yossi Maurey, Eyal Miller, David Milner, John Purcell, Simon Rhodes, Shmuel Rosner, Rami Rotholz, Michal Shavit, Michael Shenkar, Idan Sherer, Ellie Steel, Ofer Steinitz, Haim Watzman, Guy Zaslavsky and all the teachers and students in the World History programme of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Special thanks to Jared Diamond, who taught me to see the big picture; to Diego Olstein, who inspired me to write a story; and to Itzik Yahav and Deborah Harris, who helped spread the story around Image credits © ImageBank/Getty Images Israel © Visual/Corbis © Anthropologisches Institut und Museum, Universität Zurich Photo: Thomas Stephan © Ulmer Museum © magiccarpics.co.uk © Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images Photo: The Upper Galilee Museum of Prehistory © Visual/Corbis © Visual/Corbis 10 Poster: Waterhouse Hawkins, c.1862 © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum 11 © Visual/Corbis 12 Photo: Karl G Heider © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM# 2006.17.1.89.2 (digital file# 98770053) 13 Photos and © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut 14 © Visual/Corbis 15 Photo and © Anonymous for Animal Rights (Israel) 16 © De Agostini Picture Library/G Dagli Orti/The Bridgeman Art Library 17 Engraving: William J Stone, 1823 © The Art Archive/National Archives Washington DC (ref: AA399024) 18 © Adam Jones/Corbis 19 © The Schøyen Collection, Oslo and London, MS 1717 http://www.schoyencollection.com/ 20 Manuscript: History of the Inca Kingdom, Nueva Coronica y buen Gobierno, c.1587, illustrations by Guarnan Poma de Ayala, Peru © The Art Archive/Archaeological Museum Lima/Gianni Dagli Orti (ref: AA365957) 21 Photo: Guy Tillim/Africa Media Online, 1989 © africanpictures/akg 22 © Réunion des musées nationaux/Gérard Blot 23 © Visual/Corbis 24 © Visual/Corbis 25 © Universal History Archive/UIG/The Bridgeman Art Library 26 Illustration based on: Joe Cribb (ed.), Money: From Cowrie Shells to Credit Cards (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1986), 27 27 © akg/Bible Land Pictures 28 © Stuart Black/Robert Harding World Imagery/Getty Images 29 © The Art Archive/Gianni Dagli Orti (ref: AA423796) 30 Library of Congress, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum © courtesy of Roland Klemig 31 Photo: Boaz Neumann From Kladderadatsch 49 (1933), 7 32 © Visual/Corbis 33 © Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library 34 Painting: Franklin’s Experiment, June 1752, published by Currier & Ives © Museum of the City of New York/Corbis 35 Portrait: C A Woolley, 1866, National Library of Australia (ref: an23378504) 36 © British Library Board (shelfmark add 11267) 37 © Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms Laur Med Palat 249 (mappa Salviati) 38 Illustration © Neil Gower 39 Redraft of the Castello Plan, John Wolcott Adams, 1916 © Collection of the New-York Historical Society/The Bridgeman Art Library 40 Photo and © Anonymous for Animal Rights (Israel) 41 © Photo Researchers/Visualphotos.com 42 © Chaplin/United Artists/The Kobal Collection/Max Munn Autrey 43 Lithograph from a photo by Fishbourne & Gow, San Francisco, 1850s © Corbis 44 © Proehl Studios/Corbis 45 Europa Press via Getty Images 46 Photo and © Charles Vacanti 47 © ImageBank/Getty Images Israel ... English translation copyright © 2014 by Yuval Noah Harari Cloth edition published 2014 Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Harvill Secker First published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 by Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir... infringement of the copyright law Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Harari, Yuval N., author Sapiens : a brief history of humankind / Yuval Noah Harari Includes bibliographical references ISBN 978-0-7710-3850-1 (bound).–ISBN 978-0-7710-38525 (html)... Daily usage of fire 200,000 Homo sapiens evolves in East Africa The Cognitive Revolution 70,000 Emergence of fictive language Beginning of history Sapiens spread out of Africa 45,000 Sapiens settle Australia